At the start of the 2012-13 school year, Hawk Elementary School became the only Denton ISD campus to pilot a standards-based reporting system school-wide, with students receiving a numeric score for specific skills and goals, not subjects.

Listed on students’ report cards at Hawk are the essential skills a student must learn to advance to the next grade. Students are rated on their knowledge of those skills dependent on the six weeks in which the material is taught. Ratings range from 1 to 3 for students in kindergarten through second grade, and 1 to 4 for students in third through fourth grade.

Ratings are: 1, insufficient progress; 2, making progress; and 3, meets expectation. A rating of 4 in grades three, four and five identifies a student who has exceeded expectations. Teachers also report student behavior, just as they do on traditional report cards.

“[Students] have to demonstrate they’ve truly learned a concept, and by doing it the way we’ve done it, we’ve made every child accountable for their learning and every teacher accountable for a child’s learning and me accountable for every teacher knowing,” Principal Susannah O’Bara told the paper. “Accountability has really increased with this.”